Optimal Title Tag for WordPress
Some time ago I wrote a post titled “Keep your Title Tags short and pertinent“ outlining the best practices for Title tags. Most blogging platforms come with a standard Title tag structure that places the blog name and post title on single post pages. Suppose you have the “ABC Blog” and you just published a post called “Top 10 Firefox extensions”. In that case your Title tag for that single page would be “ABC Blog – Top 10 Firefox extensions”.
This Title structure is good but not optimal. The best possible Title tag for a single blog post is the title of the post alone. The name of the blog will increase the number of keywords (reducing the value of each one) and it might not be related to the post content at all.
Below you will find the code that I use for my Title tag. This code will display the blog name on the home page, the post title on single post pages and the blog name plus category name for category pages.
<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ' - ' ; bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif (is_single() ) { single_post_title();}
elseif (is_page() ) { single_post_title();}
else { wp_title(‘’,true); } ?></title>
Related Posts
Sign-up To The Newsletter And Get A Free eBook
- Sign-up to the Daily Blog Tips newsletter and you will be able to download the "Make Money Blogging" eBook for free (worth $47).
- You will also receive tips to improve your blog, strategies to make money and useful resources from around the web.
40 Responses to “Optimal Title Tag for WordPress”
Sponsors
Popular Articles
- 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website
- 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
- 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic
- How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
- Top 25 SEO Blogs
- 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006
- 30 Traffic Generation Tips
- 6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site
- 9 Hacks to Show Readers Your Best Stuff
- 50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers
- The Best Website Taglines
- What Is Success?
- How to setup a 301 Redirect
- The 7 Characteristics of Good Domains
- 7 Ways to Promote your Site
- Top 25 Celebrity Blogs
- What Is A Blog?
- Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips
- 10 Tips To Write Your Most Popular Post
- The Blog Post Checklist
- Interview: 12 Top Online Entrepreneurs
- What Is Bounce Rate?
- 20 SEO Terms You Should Know
- How To Choose A Blog Name
- 10 Tips to Sell Your Website on Flippa
- Top 25 Web Design Blogs
Great tip! If you change your “echo ‘Daily Blog Tips’” above to bloginfo(‘name’), you can help people be more lazy and just copy and paste. Like this:
I am using SEO Title Tag plugin for wordpress and it pretty much does the same thing. I’d much rather use the code above.
I wrote sth similar on opn wp
Lionel, yeah you can insert that line to get the name automatically, but I left the written name cause I also experimented with different descriptions and combinations to see what would work best.
Fanatyk, I will check your version.
That is a really great tip. I use a plugin called “Jeromes Keywords” for all of my posts. Your code piece will make a nice addition. Thank you.
John, dont forget to use Jeromes keywords to produce a dynamic Meta Keywords tag. It works really well.
Very nice. I’ve never really though about keywords being diluted by my page title. I’ve just implemented this on WallerBlog.com Thanks for the tip!
What about page title? It will display your blog’s name only without any information about the page with the code above.
I second what Vincent asks? What about page title? For example your about page should read ‘About’, ‘Daily Blog Tips – About’, or some permutation of the sorts.
Fixing Daniels above code snippet, the answer to Vincent and my question would be:
Sorry, last comment post removed the HTML
just add the following else if statement into Daniels code:
elseif (is_page()) { echo ‘{codesqueeze} – ‘; wp_title(”); }
What about page title? It will display your blog’s name only without any information about the page with the code above.
Programlar, from my experience the optimal title tag for the homepage is just the blog name.
If you are aiming for a specific keyword that is not related to your blog name then sure change it.
Hi there,
I came up with something similar myself, but my implementation displays your blog name and then the tagline on your home page and the page title (either post title, page title, archive, category, etc.) then your blog name on every other page.
Have a look at my title structure for wordpress and let me know what you think.
I’ll use it! http://www.koolster.net
Thanks just what I was looking for.
CHECK OUT A NEW BLOG…WWW.KOOLSTER.NET
SHARE YOUR IDEAS ABOUT SOCIALLY RELEVANT THINGS!
Just use “all-in-one-seo-pack” plugin for WordPress blog.
It let you configure the title dynamically.
Thanks for this code, I got it to work but only if I take away the title closing tag I am not sure why it doesn’t work when the closing tag is there.
A really great tip! It has improved my SEO rankings!
Thank you for this wordpress titletag code.. just used this on my blog and it is working perfect. The ‘archives’ and the ‘author ‘ section do not show any title tag, but that’s ok, not a big deal. Thanks again.
I just got an email in my inbox talking about search engines and title tags and how to optimize them but I wasn’t sure how to do it in WP till I googled “where is my title tag in wordpress” and came across your article here.
I guess you answered my question about the title tag. I was always confused with this concept until you explained how a post should be simple whereas a page may include the site’s name.
I double checked and found that I could edit my All in One SEO pack to set up the title tags to include only the post title. Now I can learn how to write nifty titles without worrying about “diluting” the keywords as you mentioned.
Thank you.
I’ve been using Atahualpa’s SEO options page for this. Very handy theme.
As I wander through DBT’s archives, I find a lot of old posts where a plugin or theme hack is recommended, but its functionality has ended up in this theme.
I guess that means it’s all good advice.